Performance of functional psychotics on a repetitive task.

On a repetitive task for 2 successive periods of 10 minutes, non-paranoid schizophrenics showed little improvement with practice during the first period, a rise in level of performance after rest, and a fall in level during the second period. Endogenous depressives showed improvement during both periods, but little increase of performance after rest. Differences in performance were significant between the 2 groups. For the schizophrenics there were differences in response rate depending on length of hospitalization. These findings support results of other investigators and are consistent with the theory of differential susceptibility to reactive inhibition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)